Non-planar dielectrics derived thermal and electrostatic field inhomogeneity for boosted weather-adaptive energy harvesting

Yi Zhou; Tianpeng Ding; Yin Cheng; Yi Huang; Wu Wang; Jianmin Yang; Lin Xie; Ghim Wei Ho; Jiaqing He

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwad186

Non-planar dielectrics derived thermal and electrostatic field inhomogeneity for boosted weather-adaptive energy harvesting

Natl Sci Rev. 2023 Jun 28;10(9):nwad186. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad186. eCollection 2023 Sep.

Authors

Yi Zhou^{1

2}, Tianpeng Ding^{2

3}, Yin Cheng², Yi Huang¹, Wu Wang¹, Jianmin Yang^{1

4}, Lin Xie¹, Ghim Wei Ho^{2

4

5}, Jiaqing He^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Thermoelectric Materials and Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117581, Singapore.
³ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Film and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore.
⁵ Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore 138634, Singapore.
⁶ Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Photonic-Thermal-Electrical Energy Materials and Devices, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.

Abstract

Weather-adaptive energy harvesting of omnipresent waste heat and rain droplets, though promising in the field of environmental energy sustainability, is still far from practice due to its low electrical output owing to dielectric structure irrationality and unscalability. Here we present atypical upcycling of ambient heat and raindrop energy via an all-in-one non-planar energy harvester, simultaneously increasing solar pyroelectricity and droplet-based triboelectricity by two-fold, in contrast to conventional counterparts. The delivered non-planar dielectric with high transmittance confines the solar irradiance onto a focal hotspot, offering transverse thermal field propagation towards boosted inhomogeneous polarization with a generated power density of 6.1 mW m^-2 at 0.2 sun. Moreover, the enlarged lateral surface area of curved architecture promotes droplet spreading/separation, thus travelling the electrostatic field towards increased triboelectricity. These enhanced pyroelectric and triboelectric outputs, upgraded with advanced manufacturing, demonstrate applicability in adaptive sustainable energy harvesting on sunny, cloudy, night, and rainy days. Our findings highlight a facile yet efficient strategy, not only for weather-adaptive environmental energy recovery but also in providing key insights for spatial thermal/electrostatic field manipulation in thermoelectrics and ferroelectrics.

Keywords: energy harvesting; heat manipulation; non-planar dielectrics; pyroelectrics; weather-adaptive.